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On
the Connection of the Living and the Dead

Berne, 9 November 1916

It is one of the aims of
our spiritual-scientific endeavour to form concrete ideas of how we,
as human beings upon earth, live with the spiritual worlds, even as
we are connected through the physical body — its experiences
and perceptions — with the physical world.

At the present stage
of our studies we may well take our start from what is already known
to us — what has already come before our souls during these
years. Here, for instance, is the world of our sense-perceptions, the
world to which we direct our will-impulses for which the physical
body mediates — that is to say, our actions. Immediately behind
it, as you know, there is the elemental world. That is the next world
behind this one. It is not a question of the name; we might have
named it differently. To gain clear and living ideas of these
super-sensible worlds we must at least enter into some of their
peculiarities. We must try to recognize what they are for us as human
beings. For in truth our whole life between birth and death —
and also our subsequent life which takes its course between death and
a new birth — depends on our co-existence with the various
worlds that are spread out around us. We call the ‘elemental
world’ that world which can only be perceived by what we know
as ‘imaginations.’ Hence we may also call it the
‘imaginative world.’ In ordinary human life, under
ordinary conditions, man cannot lift into consciousness his
imaginative perceptions — his perceptions of the elemental
world. Not that the imaginations are not there, or that in any given
moment of our sleeping or waking life we are not in relation to the
elemental world, receiving imaginations from it. On the contrary,
imaginations are perpetually ebbing and flowing in us. Though we are
unaware of it, we constantly receive impressions from the elemental
world. Just as when we open our eyes or lend our ears to the outer
world we have sensations of colour and light, perceptions of sound,
so do we receive continual impressions from the elemental world,
giving rise to imaginations — in this case, in our etheric
body. Imaginations differ from ordinary thought in this respect. In
ordinary, every-day human thoughts, only the head is concerned as an
instrument of conscious assimilation and experience. In our
imaginations, on the other hand, we partake with almost the whole of
our organism — albeit, it is our etheric organism. In our
etheric organism they are constantly taking place — we may
refer to them as unconscious imaginations, since it is only for an
occultly trained cognition that they rise into consciousness.
Moreover, though they do not enter our consciousness directly in
every-day life, they are by no means without significance for us. No,
for our life as a whole they are far more important than our
sense-perceptions, for we are united far more intensely and
intimately with our imaginations than with our sense-perceptions.

From the mineral
kingdom, as physical human beings, we receive few imaginations. We
receive more through all that we develop by living with the
plant-world and with the animal. But the greater part, by far, of
what lives as imaginations in our etheric body is due to our
relations to our fellow human beings, and all that these relations
entail for our life as a whole. In fact, our whole relation to our
fellow human beings — our whole attitude towards them —
is fundamentally based on imaginations. Imaginations always result
from the way we meet another human being, and though, as I said, to
ordinary consciousness they do not appear as imaginations,
nevertheless they make themselves felt in the sympathies and
antipathies which play such an overwhelming part in our life. To a
greater or lesser degree, we develop sympathies and antipathies with
all that approaches us as human beings in this world. We have our
vague undefined feelings, slight inclinations or disinclinations.
Sometimes our sympathies grow into friendship and love — love
which can be so enhanced that we think we can no longer live without
this or that human being. All this is due to the imaginations which
are perpetually called forth, in our etheric body, by our life with
our fellow human beings. In fact we always carry with us in life
something that cannot quite be called memory — for it is far
more real than memory. We bear within us — shall we say —
these enhanced memories or imaginations which we have received from
all the impressions of the human beings with who we have ever been,
and which we go on receiving all the time. We bear them within us,
and they constitute a goodly portion of what we call our inner life.
I mean not the inner life that lives in clear, well-defined memories,
but that inner life which makes itself felt in our prevailing mood
and feeling and outlook — our outlook on the world itself, or
on our own life in the world. We would go past the world around us
coldly and we would live with our contemporary world indifferently if
we did not unfold this imaginative life by living together with other
beings — and notably with other human beings.

It is, as we might
say, our soul's interest in the surrounding world which makes itself
felt in this way. It belongs especially to the elemental world, and
notably to our own etheric body. It is, above all, inherent in the
forces of our etheric body, and it makes itself felt in this way.
Sometimes we feel ourselves immediately ‘caught’ and
interested. Such interest as is often woven from the very first
moment between one human being and another is due to definite
relationships which arise between the one — the one etheric
human being — and the other, bringing about the play of
imaginations hither and thither. We live with these imaginations and
with our resulting sympathies, of whose effect and intensity we are
often largely unaware, or aware only in the vaguest way. Indeed, when
our everyday life is not wide-awake but runs along more or less
obtusely, we often fail to observe them at all.

We belong with all
this to the elemental world, for it is out of the elemental world
that we have our own etheric body. Our etheric body is our instrument
of communication with the elemental world. With it, however, we do
not only spin out relationships to those other etheric bodies which
belong to physical beings. We are also related with our etheric body
to spiritual beings of an elemental character. The ‘beings of
an elemental character’ are precisely those who are able to
call forth in us imaginations — conscious or unconscious. We
are perpetually related to a multitude of elemental beings. It is in
this that one human being differs from another. They have their
several relationships — one person to a given set of elemental
beings, another to another set of elemental beings. Moreover, the
relations of the one human being to certain elemental beings may
sometimes coincide with the relations of the other to the same
beings. One thing, however, must be observed in this connection.
While we are always, in a manner of speaking, akin to a large number
of elemental beings, we have relations of special intensity to one
elemental being, who is in essence the counterpart of our own etheric
body. Our own etheric body is intimately related to one particular
etheric being. Just as our etheric body — what we call our
etheric body from birth until death — develops its own
relations to the physical world inasmuch as it is inserted in a
physical body, so does this etheric entity, which is as it were the
counterpart or counter-pole of our own etheric body, enable us to
have relations to the whole of the elemental world — the whole
of the surrounding, cosmic-elemental world.

We gaze upon an
elemental world to which we ourselves belong by virtue of our etheric
body, and with which we stand in manifold relations — specific
relationships to such and such elemental beings. In the elemental
world we make acquaintance with beings who are truly no less real
than human beings or animals in the physical — beings, however,
who never come to incarnation, but only to
‘etherization,’ so to speak, for their densest
corporeality is ethereal. Just as we go about among physical people
in this world, so do we constantly go about among such elemental
beings, while other elemental beings — more remote from
ourselves — are related in their turn to other people. A
certain number, however, are more nearly related to ourselves, and
one among them — related to us most nearly of all — acts
as our organ of communication with the entire cosmic-elemental world.
Now in the time immediately following our passage through the Gate of
Death, when for a few days we still bear our etheric body with us, we
ourselves become precisely such a being as these elemental beings
are. In a manner of speaking, we ourselves become an elemental being.
We have often described this process of the passage through the Gate
of Death, but the more exactly we study it, the clearer the
imaginations it provides. For the impressions we receive immediately
after the passage of a human being through the Gate of Death always
consist in imaginations — make themselves felt as
imaginations.

Observing the process
more exactly, we find that there is a certain mutual interplay,
immediately after death, between our own etheric body and its etheric
counterpart. The fact that our etheric body is taken from us a few
days after death is mainly due to its being attracted — drawn
in, as it were — by this etheric counterpart. Henceforth it
becomes one with the etheric counterpart. A few days after death we
do in fact lay aside our etheric body, we hand it over, so to speak;
but it is to our own etheric counterpart that we hand it over. Our
etheric body is taken from us by our own cosmic prototype or image
and, as a result, special relations now emerge between what is thus
taken from us and the other elemental beings with whom we have been
related in any way during our life. We might describe it thus: a kind
of mutual relation now arises between what our own etheric body has
become — united as it now is with its counterpart or
counter-image — and the other elemental beings who accompanied
us from birth till death. It might be compared to the relation of a
sun to its associated planetary system. Our etheric body with its
cosmic counterpart is like a kind of sun, surrounded — as a
kind of planetary system — by the other elemental beings. This
mutual interplay gives rise to the forces which instill into the
elemental world — in the right manner and in slow evolution
— what our etheric body is able to take into that world. That
which we commonly refer to in abstract terms — ‘the
dissolution of the etheric body’ — is essentially a play
of forces, engendered by this sun-planetary system which we have left
behind. Gradually, what we acquired and assimilated to our etheric
body in the course of life becomes a part of the spiritual world. It
weaves itself into the forces of the spiritual world. We must be very
clear on this. Every thought, every idea, every feeling we develop
— however hidden it remains — is of significance for the
spiritual world. For when the coherence is broken by our passage
through the Gate of Death, all our thoughts and feelings pass with
our etheric body into the spiritual world and become part and parcel
of it. We do not live for nothing. Even as we receive them into the
thoughts we make our own, into the feelings we experience, so are the
fruits of our life embodied in the cosmos. This is a truth we must
receive into our whole mood and outlook; otherwise we do not rightly
conduct ourselves in the spiritual-scientific movement. You are not a
spiritual scientist merely by knowing about certain things. You are
so only if you feel yourself, by virtue of this knowledge, within the
spiritual world; if you know yourself quite definitely as a member in
the spiritual world. Then you will say to yourself: the thought you
are now harbouring is of significance for the entire universe, for at
your death it will be handed over to the universe in such or such a
form.

Now after a human
being's death we may have to do, in one form or another, with what is
thus handed over to the universe. Many of the ways in which the dead
are present to those whom they have left behind are due to the fact
that the etheric human being — which has, of course, been laid
aside by the real individuality — sends back his imaginations
to the living. And if the living person is sensitive enough, or if he
is in some abnormal state or has normally prepared himself by proper
spiritual training, the influences of what is thus given over to the
spiritual world by the dead — the influences, that is to say,
of imaginative natures — can emerge in him in a conscious
form.

But there still
remains a connection after death between the true human individuality
and this etheric entity which has separated from him. There is a
mutual interplay between them. We can observe it most clearly when by
spiritual training we come into actual intercourse with this
or that dead individual. A certain kind of intercourse can
then take place, as follows: to begin with, the dead human being
conveys to his etheric body what he himself wishes to transmit to us
who are still in the physical world. For only by his transmitting it
to his etheric body — as it were, making inscriptions in his
etheric body — only by this means can we, who are here in the
physical, have perceptions of the dead in terms of what we call
‘imaginations.’ The moment we have imaginations of him,
the etheric body of the dead — if you will pardon my use of the
trivial and all too realistic term — is acting as a
‘switch’ or ‘commutator.’ Do not imagine that
our relations to the dead need be any the less deeply felt because
such an instrument is needed. A person who meets us in the outer
world also conveys his form to us by the picture which he calls forth
in us through our own eyes. So it is with this transmission through
the etheric body. We perceive what the dead wishes to convey to us by
‘getting’ it, so to speak, via his etheric body. This
body is outside him, but he is so intimately related to it that he
can inscribe in it what lives within himself, and thus enable us to
read it in imaginations. There is, however, this condition. If a
person who is spiritually trained wishes to come into connection with
a dead human being through the etheric body in this way, he must have
entered into some relation to the dead — either in his last
life between birth and death, or out of former incarnations.
Moreover, these relationships must have affected his soul — the
soul of the one who is still living here — deeply enough for
the imaginations to make an impression on him. For this can only be
if in his heart and mind he had a definite and living interest in the
dead person. Interests of heart and feeling must always be the
mediator between the living and the dead, if any intercourse at all
is to take place — conscious or unconscious. (Of the latter we
shall speak presently.) Some interest of heart and feeling must be
there, so that we really carry something of the dead within us. In a
certain respect at any rate the dead person must have constituted a
portion of our own soul's experience. Only one who is spiritually
trained can make himself a certain substitute. For instance —
(it may seem external at first sight, but spiritual training turns it
into something far more inward) — one can give oneself up to
the impression of the handwriting, or of something else in which the
individuality of the dead is living. However, one can only do so if
one has acquired a certain practice in making contact with an
individuality through the fact that he lives in the writing. Or
again, one may establish this possibility by entering with sympathy
into the feelings of the physical survivors, partaking in their grief
and in all the emotional interest they have in the dead person. By
entering with sympathy into these real and living feelings, which
flow from the dead into the dear ones whom he has left on Earth
— or which remain in their inner life — a person of
spiritual training can prepare his soul to read in the aforesaid
imaginations.

But we must also
realize the following. Though to perceive the imaginations which play
over from the etheric body depends on spiritual training or other
special conditions, yet at the same time what passes unperceived by
people is there none the less. And we may truly say, those who are
living in the physical world are not only woven around by the
elemental forces, as imaginations, which proceed from other human
beings living with them in the physical body. Whether we know it or
not, our etheric body is constantly played-through by all the
imaginations which we absorb from those who stood in any kind of
relation to us and who passed before us through the Gate of Death. As
in our physical life, in the physical body, we are related to the air
around us, so are we related to the whole of the elemental world
— including all that is there of the dead.

We shall never learn
to know our human life unless we gain knowledge of these
relationships, albeit they are so intimate and fine that they remain
unnoticed by most people. After all, who can deny that we do not
always remain the same between birth and death. Let us look back upon
our lives. However consistent we may think the course of life has
been, we will soon notice that we have often gone hither and thither
in life, or that this or that has occurred. Even if this does not
immediately change the direction of our lives, which it can of course
do, it nonetheless has the effect of enriching our lives in one way
or another — in a happy direction or in a painful one. It
brings us into different conditions — just as when you go into
another district your general feeling of health may be changed by the
different composition of the air.

These moods of soul,
into which we enter in our life's course, are due to the influences
of the elemental world, and in no small measure to the influences
that come from the dead who were formerly related to us. Many a human
being in earthly life meets with a friend or with some person with
whom he becomes connected in one way or another — to whom,
perhaps, he finds himself obliged to do this or that by way of
kindness or of criticism or rebuke. The fact that they were brought
together required the influence of certain forces. He who recognizes
the occult connections in the world knows that when two human beings
are brought together to this end or that, sometimes one and sometimes
several of those who have gone before them through the Gate of Death
are instrumental. Our life does not become any the less free thereby.
We do not lose our freedom because we starve if we do not eat. No one
who is not deliberately foolish will say: how can a person be free,
seeing that he is obliged to eat? It would be just as invalid to say
that we become unfree because our soul constantly receives influences
from the elemental world as here described. Indeed, just as we are
connected with warmth and cold, with all the things that become our
food and with the air around us, so are we connected with that which
comes to us from those who have died before us. We are equally
connected with the rest of the elemental world, but above all with
that which comes to us from them, and we can truly say: man's working
for his fellow human beings does not cease with his passage through
the Gate of Death. Through his etheric body, with which he himself
remains connected, he sends his imaginations into those with whom he
was connected in his life. Indeed, the world to which we are here
referring is far more real than that we commonly call real —
even if, in our every-day life, for very good reasons, it remains
unperceived. So much, for today, about the elemental world.

A further realm which
is ever present in our environment, and to which we ourselves belong
no less than to the element: world, is the soul world —
for so we may call it. (It is not the name that matters.) With the
elemental world we are always connected in our waking life, and in
sleep, too, indirectly, when with our ego and astral body we are
outside the physical and the etheric; when our body that lies there
in the bed, and our etheric body, are still connected with the
elemental world. But with the higher world to which I now refer, we
are connected most directly — only that this too cannot rise
into our consciousness in ordinary life. We are connected with it in
sleep when we have our astral body freely around us, and also in
waking life — albeit then the connection, mediated as it is by
forces which the physical body has drawn into itself, is no longer so
direct.

Now in this
world-of-soul (let us call it the soul world for the present;
medieval philosophers referred to it as the heavenly world or the
celestial) in this world, once more, we find beings who are just as
real as we are during our life between birth and death, nay, more so.
They are, however, beings who do not need to come to embodiment in a
physical, or even in an etheric, body. They live — as in their
lowest corporeality — in that which we are wont to call the
astral body. Constantly, during our life and after our death, we are
connected intimately with a large number of these purely astral
beings. Here, too, human beings differ from one another inasmuch as
they are related to different astral beings — albeit, here
again, two people may have their relationships to one or more astral
beings in common, while at the same time each of them has his several
relations to other astral beings.

It is to this world,
in which these astral beings are, that we ourselves belong from the
time when, after passing through the Gate of Death, we have laid
aside our etheric body. We with our own individuality are then among
the beings of the soul world. We are such beings at that time, and
beings of the soul world are our immediate environment. True, we are
also related to the content of the elemental world, inasmuch as we
can kindle in it that which calls forth imaginations as aforesaid. We
have, however, the elemental world in a certain sense outside us
— or, as one might also say, beneath us. It is a portion of
which we rather make use for purposes of communication with the
remainder of the world, while we ourselves belong directly to what I
have now called the world-of-soul. It is with the beings of the soul
world that we have our intercourse, including other human beings who
have also passed through the Gate of Death and, after a few days,
laid aside their etheric bodies.

Now just as we
constantly get influences from the elemental world, although we do
not notice it, so too we constantly receive influences —
straight into our astral body — out of this world-of-soul which
I am now describing. It is only the immediate, straightforward
influences which we thus receive that can appear as inspirations. (Of
the indirect influences via the etheric body we have already spoken.)
You will understand the character of such an influence from the soul
world if I describe once more in a few words how it appears to one
who is spiritually trained — one who is able to receive
conscious inspirations out of the spiritual world. It appears to him
as follows. He can only bring these inspirations to his consciousness
if he is able, so to speak, to take into himself some portion of the
being who wants to inspire him — some portion of the qualities,
of the inherent tendency in life, of such a being.

One who is spiritually
trained to develop conscious relations with a dead person, not only
via the etheric body but in this direct way through inspiration, must
bear in his soul even more than mere interest or sympathy is able to
call forth. For a short while, at least, he must be so able to
transform himself as to receive into his own being something of the
habits, the character, the very human nature of the one with whom he
wishes to communicate. He must be able to enter into him till he can
truly say to himself, ‘I am taking on his habits to such an
extent that I could do what he could, and in his way; that I could
feel as he could, and will as he could, also.’ It is the
‘could’ that matters — the possibility. We must,
therefore, be able to live together with the dead even more
intimately. For a person of spiritual training there are many ways of
coming thus near to the dead, provided the dead person himself allows
it. We should, however, realize that the beings who belong to what we
are now calling the world-of-soul are quite differently related to
the world than we are in our physical body. Hence there are certain
conditions, quite definite conditions, of intercourse with such
beings — and, among others, with the dead, so long as they are
living still as astral beings in their astral bodies. We may draw
attention especially to certain points.

You see, all that we
develop for our life in the physical body — our many and varied
relationships to other people (I mean precisely those relationships
which arise through earthly life) — all this acquires quite
another kind of interest for the dead. Here on the earth we develop
sympathies and antipathies. Let us be fully clear on this. Such
sympathies and antipathies as we develop while we are living in the
physical body are subject to the influences of this our present form
of life, which we owe to the physical body and to its conditions.
They are subject to the influences of our own vanity and of our
egoism. Let us not fail to realize how many relationships we develop
to this or that human being as a result of vanity or egoism —
or other things that depend on our physical and earthly life in this
world. We love other people or we hate them. Verily, as a rule, we
take little notice of the true grounds of our loving and our hating
— our sympathies and antipathies. Nay, often enough we flee
from taking conscious notice of our sympathies and antipathies, for
the simple reason that, if we did so, highly unpleasant truths would
as a rule emerge. If, for instance, we followed up the real facts
which find expression in our not loving this or that human being, we
should often have to ascribe to ourselves so much of prejudice or
vanity or other qualities that we are afraid to do so. Therefore we
do not bring to full clarity in consciousness why it is that we hate
this person or that. And with love, too, the case is often similar.
Interests, sympathies and antipathies evolve in this way, which only
have significance for our everyday life. Yet it is out of all this
that we act. We arrange our life according to these interests and
sympathies and antipathies.

Now it would be quite
wrong to imagine that the dead can possibly have the same interest as
we earthly people have in all the ephemeral sympathies and
antipathies which thus arise under the influence of our physical and
earthly life. That would be utterly wrong. Truly, the dead are
obliged to look at these things from quite another point of view.
Moreover, we may ask ourselves, are we not largely influenced in our
estimate of our fellow human beings by these subjective feelings
— by all that lies inherent in our subjective interest, our
vanity and egoism and the like? Let us not think for a moment that a
dead person can have any interest in such relationships between
ourselves and other human beings, or in our actions which proceed out
of such interests. But we must also not imagine that the dead person
does not see what is living in our souls. For it is really living
there, and the dead one sees it well enough. He shares in it, too,
but he sees something else as well. One who is dead has quite another
way of judging people. He sees them quite differently. As to the way
in which the dead person sees the human beings who are here on earth,
there is one thing of outstanding importance. Let us not imagine that
the dead has not a keen and living interest in the world of human
beings. He has, indeed, for the world of human beings belongs to the
whole cosmos. Our own life belongs to the cosmos. And just as we,
even in the physical world, interest ourselves in the subordinate
kingdoms, so do the dead interest themselves intensely in the human
world, and send their active impulses into the human world. For the
dead work through the living into this world. We have only just given
an example of the way in which they go on working soon after their
passage through the Gate of Death.

But the dead sees one
thing above all, and that most clearly. Suppose, for example, that he
sees a human being here following impulses of hatred — hating
this person or that, and with a merely personal intensity or purpose.
This the dead sees. At the same time, however, according to the whole
manner of his vision and all that he is then able to know, he will
observe quite clearly, in such a case, the part which Ahriman is
playing. He sees how Ahriman impels the person to hatred. The dead
actually sees Ahriman working upon the human being. On the other
hand, if a person on earth is vain, he sees Lucifer working at him.
That is the essential point. It is in connection with the world of
Ahriman and Lucifer that the dead human being sees the human beings
who are here on earth. Consequently, what generally colours our
judgement of people is quite eliminated for the dead. We see this or
that human being, whom in one sense or another we must condemn.
Whatever we find blameworthy in him, we put it down to him. The dead
does not put it down directly to the human being. He sees how the
person is misled by Lucifer or Ahriman. This brings about a
toning-down, so to speak, of the sharply differentiated feelings
which in our physical and earthly life we generally have towards this
or that human being. To a far greater extent, a kind of universal
human love arises in the dead. This does not mean that he cannot
criticize — that is to say, cannot rightly see what is evil in
evil. He sees it well enough, but he is able to refer it to its
origin — to its real inner connections.

What I have here
described is not without its results, for it means that an
occultly-trained person cannot consciously come near to one who is
dead unless he truly frees himself from feelings of personal sympathy
or antipathy to individuals. He must not allow himself to be
dependent, in his soul, on personal feelings of sympathy or
antipathy. You need only imagine it for a moment. Suppose that an
occultly-trained, clairvoyant person were about to approach a dead
human being — whoever he might be — so that the
inspirations which the dead was sending in towards him might find
their way into his consciousness. Suppose, moreover, that the one
here living were pursuing another human being with a quite special
hatred — hatred having its origin only in personal
relationships. Then, of a truth, as fire is avoided by our hand, so
would the dead avoid such a person who was capable of hatred for
personal reasons. He cannot approach him, for hatred works on the
dead like fire. To come into conscious relation with the dead we must
be able to make ourselves like them — independent, in a sense,
of personal sympathies and antipathies.

Hence you will
understand what I now have to say. Bear in mind this whole relation
of the dead to the living, in so far as it rests on Inspirations.
Remember that the inspirations are always there, even if they pass
unnoticed. They are perpetually living in the human astral body, so
that the human being upon earth has his relations to the dead in this
direct way, too. Now, after all that we have said, you will well
understand that these relationships depend on our whole mood and
spirit here in our life on earth. If our attitude to other people is
hostile, if we are without interest or sympathy for our
contemporaries above all, if we have not an unprejudiced interest in
our fellow human beings — then are the dead unable to approach
us in the way they long to do. They cannot properly transplant
themselves into our souls, or, if they must do so, in one way or
another it is made difficult for them and they can only do it with
great suffering and pain. All in all, the living-together of the dead
with the living is complicated.

Thus man goes on
working beyond the time when he passes through the Gate of Death,
even directly, inasmuch as after death he inspires those who are
living on the physical plane. And this is absolutely true. Notably as
to their inner habits and qualities — the way they think and
feel and develop inclinations — those who are living at any
given time on earth are largely dependent on those who died and
passed from the earth before them, who were related to them during
their life, or to whom they themselves established a relation even
after death — which may sometimes happen, though it is not so
easy.

A certain portion of
the world-ordering and of the whole progress of mankind is altogether
dependent on this working of the dead into the life of earthly human
beings, inspiring them. Nay, more, in their instinctive life people
are not without an inkling that it is so and that it must be so. We
can observe it if we consider ways of life, formerly very
wide-spread, which are now dying out because humanity in the course
of evolution goes ever onward to new forms of life. In bygone times
when, generally speaking, they divined far more of the reality of
spiritual worlds, people were more deeply aware of what is necessary
for life as a whole. They knew that the living need the dead —
need to receive into their habits and customs the impulses from the
dead. What, then, did they do? You need only think of former times,
when in wide circles it was customary for a father to take care that
his son should inherit and carry on his business, so that the son
went on working on the same lines. Then when the father was long
dead, inasmuch as the son remained in the same channels of life, a
bond of communication was created through the physical world itself.
The son's activity and life-work being akin to his father's, the
father was able to work on in him. Many things in life were based on
this principle. And if whole classes of society attached great value
to the inheritance of this or that property within the class or
within its several families, it was due to their divining this
necessity. Into the life-habits of those who live later, the
life-habits of those who lived earlier must enter, but only when
these life-habits are so far ripened that they come from them after
they have passed through the Gate of Death — for it is only
then that they become mature.

These things are
ceasing, as you know — for such is the progress of the human
race. We can already see a time approaching when these inheritances,
these conservative conditions, will no longer play a part. The
physical bonds will no longer be there in the same way. But all the
more, to compensate for this, people must receive such detailed
spiritual-scientific knowledge as will lift the whole matter into
their consciousness. For then they will be able consciously to
connect their life with the life-habits of former times — with
which we have to reckon in order that life may go forward with
continuity. Since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period we
are living in a transition time. During this time a more or less
chaotic state has intervened. But the conditions will arise again
when in a far more conscious way — by recognition of the
spiritual-scientific truths — people will connect their life
and work with that which has gone before them. Unconsciously, merely
instinctively, they used to do so — of that there can be no
doubt. But even that which is still instinctive to this day must be
transmuted into consciousness. Instinctively, for instance, people
still teach in this way — only we do not observe it. One who
studies history on spiritual lines will soon observe it, if only he
pays attention to the facts and not to the dreadful abstractions
which prevail nowadays in the so-called humanistic branches of
scholarship. If we look at the facts we can well observe it: what is
taught in a given epoch bears a certain character only because people
attach themselves unconsciously, instinctively, to what the dead are
pouring down into the present. If once you learn to study in a real
way the educational ideas which are propounded in any given age by
the leading spirits in education — I mean not the charlatans
but the true educationists — you will soon see how these ideas
have their origins in the habitual natures of those who have recently
died.

This is a far more
intimate living-together; for that which plays into the human being's
astral body enters far more into his inner life than that which plays
into his etheric body. The communion which the dead themselves, as
individualities, can have with people on earth, is far more intimate
than that which the etheric bodies have — or, for that matter,
any other elemental beings. Hence you will see how the succeeding
epoch in the life of humanity is always conditioned by the preceding
one. The preceding time always goes on living in the time that
follows. For in reality, strange though it may sound, it is only
after our death that we become truly ripe to influence other people
— I mean to influence them directly, working right into their
inner being. To impress our own habits on any man who is ‘of
age’ (I mean now, spiritually speaking, not in the legal sense)
is the very thing we should not do. Yet it is right and according to
the conditions of the progressive evolution of mankind for us to do
so after we ourselves have passed through the Gate of Death. Beside
all the things that are contained in the progress of karma and in the
general laws of incarnation, these things take place. If you ask for
the occult reasons why, let us say, the people of this year are doing
this or that, then — not for all things but certainly for many
— you will find that they are doing it because certain impulses
are flowing down to them from those who died twenty or thirty years
ago, or even longer. These are the hidden connections — the
real concrete connections — between the physical and the
spiritual world. It is not only for ourselves that something ripens
and matures in what we carry with us through the Gate of Death. It is
not only for ourselves, but for the world at large. And it is only
from a given moment that it becomes truly ripe to work upon others.
Then, however, it does become ever riper and riper.

I beg you here to
observe that I am not speaking of externals, but of inner, spiritual
workings. A person may remember the habits of his dead father or
grandfather and repeat them out of memory on the physical plane. That
is not what I mean; that is a different matter. I really mean the
inspired influences — imperceptible, therefore, to ordinary
consciousness — the influences which make themselves felt in
our habits in our most intimate character. Much in our life depends
on our finding ourselves obliged, here or there, to free ourselves
from the influences — even the well-meant influences —
coming to us from the dead. Indeed, we gain much of our inner freedom
by having to free ourselves in this way, in one direction or another.
Inner conflicts of soul, which a person often does not know, will
grow intelligible to him when he views them in this light or that,
taking his light from spiritual knowledge of this kind. To use a
trite expression, we may say: the past is rumbling on — the
souls of the past go rumbling on — in our own inner life.

These things are facts
— truths into which we look by spiritual vision. But alas,
especially in the life of today, men have a peculiar relation to
these truths. It was not always so. Anyone who can study history in a
spiritual way will know this. Today people are afraid of these truths
— they are afraid of facing them. They have a nameless fear
— not indeed conscious, but unconscious. Unconsciously they are
afraid of recognizing the mysterious connections between soul and
soul, not only in this world, but between here and the other world.
It is this unconscious fear which holds back the people in the outer
world. This is a part of that which holds them back, instinctively,
from spiritual science. They are afraid of knowing the reality. They
are all unaware of how they are disturbing — by their
unwillingness to know reality — disturbing and confusing the
whole course of world-evolution, and with it, needless to say, the
life that will have to be lived through between death and a new
birth, when these conditions must be seen.

Still more mature
— for everything that evolves, becomes ever riper and more
mature — still more mature becomes that which lives in us when
it no longer has to stop short at Inspiration but can become
Intuition (in the true sense in which I used the word in
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.
Now Intuition can only
be a being that has none other than a Spirit-body (to use this
paradoxical expression). To work intuitively upon other beings
— and, among others, upon those who are still incarnated here
in the physical life — a human being must first have laid aside
his astral body; that is to say, he must first belong entirely to the
spiritual world. That will be decades after his death, as we know.
Then he can also work down on other people through intuition —
no longer merely through Inspiration as I described it just now. Not
until then does he as ego — now in the spiritual world —
work in a purely spiritual way into other egos. Formerly he worked by
Inspiration into the astral body — or, via his etheric body,
into the etheric body of man. But one who has been dead for decades
past can also work directly as an ego — albeit at the same time
he can still work through the other vehicles, as described above. It
is at this stage that the human individuality grows ripe to enter no
longer merely into the habits of people but even into their views and
ideas of life. To modern feeling, full of prejudice as it is, this
may be an unpleasant truth — very unpleasant, I doubt not. None
the less it is true. Our views and ideas, originating as they do in
our ego, are under constant influences from those long dead. In our
views and conceptions of life, those who are long dead are living. By
this very means, the continuity of evolution is preserved — out
of the spiritual world. It is a necessity, for otherwise the thread
of people's ideas would constantly be broken.

Forgive me if I insert
a personal matter at this point. I do so, if I may say so, for
thoroughly objective reasons. For such a truth as this can only be
made intelligible by concrete examples.

No one ought really to
bring forward, as views or ideas, his own personal opinions —
however sincerely gained. Therefore, no one who stands with full
sincerity on the true ground of occultism — no one who is
experienced in the conditions of spiritual science — will
impose his own opinions on the world. On the contrary, he will do all
he can to avoid imposing his own opinions directly. For the opinions,
the outlook he acquires under the influence of his own personal
tendency of feeling, should not begin to work until thirty or forty
years after his death. Then it will work in this way: it will come
into the souls of people along the same paths as the impulses of the
Time-Spirits or Archai. Only then has it become so mature that its
working is in harmony with the objective course of things. Hence it
is necessary for everyone who stands on the true ground of occultism
to avoid making personal proselytes — setting out to gain
followers for his own personal views. That is the general custom
nowadays. No sooner has anyone got an opinion of his own, he cannot
hasten enough to make propaganda for it. That is what a real and
practising spiritual scientist cannot possibly desire to do. Now I
may bring in the personal matter to which I referred just now. It is
no chance, but something essential to my life, that I began by
writing — communicating to the world — not my own views,
but Goethe's world-conception. That was the first thing I wrote. I
wrote entirely in the spirit and in the sense of Goethe's
world-conception, thus taking my start not from any living person.
For even if that living person were oneself, it could not possibly
justify one in teaching spiritual science in the comprehensive way I
try to do. It was a necessary link in the chain, when I thus placed
my work into the objective course of world-evolution. Therefore I did
not write my theory of knowledge, but Goethe's —
A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception
— and in this way I continued.

Thus you will see how
the development of man goes on. What he attained on earth ripens not
only for the sake of his own life as he advances on the paths of
karma. It ripens also for the world. So we continue to work for the
world. After a certain time we become ripe to send imaginations; then
— after a further time — inspirations into the habits of
human beings. And only after a longer time has elapsed do we grow
ready and mature enough to send intuitions into the most intimate
part of man's life — into the views and conceptions of
people.

Let us not imagine
that our views and conceptions of life grow out of nothing — or
that they arise anew in every age. They grow from the soil in which
our own soul is rooted, which soil is in truth identical with the
sphere of activity of human beings who died long ago.

By knowledge of such
facts, I do believe human life must receive that enrichment which it
needs, according to the character and sense of our age and of the
immediate future. Many an old custom has grown rotten to the core.
The new must be developed, as I have often said; but man cannot enter
the new life without those impulses which grow in him through
spiritual science. It is the feelings that matter — the
feelings towards the world in its entirety, and all the other beings
of the world, which we acquire through spiritual science. Our mood of
life grows different through spiritual science. The super-sensible, in
which we always are, becomes alive for us through spiritual science.
We are and always have been living in it; but human beings will be
called to know it, more and more consciously, the farther they evolve
through the fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean epochs and for
the rest of earthly time.

These things I wanted
to communicate to you today. They are indeed essential to the
enrichment, the quickening of man's whole feeling for the world, and
to the deepening of all his life. These things I wanted to kindle in
your hearts, now that we have been able to be together once more
after a lapse of time. May we be able to be together often again to
speak of similar matters, so that our souls may partake in achieving
that evolution of mankind which is the aim and endeavour of spiritual
science.